Abstract
A dam may fail when the loading exceeds the resistance against overtopping, internal erosion, slope instability, sliding/overturning, excessive deformation etc. To investigate the causes of failures, it is necessary to study characteristics of the dams which have experienced failures. In this work, more than 1600 dam failure cases throughout the world excluding China are compiled into a database, including details of the dams, the reservoirs, the triggers and the failures. This paper focuses on failure of earth dams, which make up 66% of the failure cases in the database. A statistical analysis of the failure characteristics is conducted. According to dam zoning and corewalls, earth dams are divided into four typical categories: homogeneous earthfill dams, zoned earthfill dams, earthfill dams with corewalls, and concrete faced earthfill dams. Further analysis of the failure modes and causes of the four types of earth dams is carried out. Potential locations at risk are also described to provide the reader with a better understanding of earth dam failures.
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